Biggest Loser Champ speaks to Aquinas CollegeHelen Phillips, the winner of season 7 of The Biggest Loser, spoke to Aquinas College on Friday night about her experiences on the show and how people can maintain a healthier lifestyle.

GRAND RAPIDS -- Thanks to NBC’s hit reality weight loss show “The Biggest Loser,” Michigan’s Helen Phillips went from being morbidly obese, “extremely depressed,” and downing up to 6,000 calories a day to becoming a trim athlete and motivational speaker who has inspired countless people to bust out of their ruts and get healthy.

Phillips, of Sterling Heights, won Season 7 of the same show she used to watch in tears while gobbling a pint of ice cream and a half a pizza. Her prize: $250,000 and more vital, a whopping weight loss of 140 pounds, still the most weight lost by any contestant on the show.

“I’m still the oldest ‘Biggest Loser’ winner ever, and I hold the record for the highest percentage of body fat lost, 54.47%,” she said. The now 51-year-old spoke to a group of about 200 Aquinas College students, parents and younger siblings at a special event Friday night held for the college’s “Junior Saints” weekend.

“At 48, I had tried every diet out there; I was always looking for a magic pill,” she said.

Cabbage soup diets, tea diets, shake diets — Phillips had plunged into every method she could think of to shed her excess weight. She even tried starving herself and eating no food at all for awhile.

Her efforts added up to nothing but more weight gain in the long run, not to mention a crippled self-esteem and severe depression.

Michigan’s overcast wintry weather did nothing to boost her spirits or promote exercise.

“In Michigan, we get past our fall season and we fall into hibernation, eating all the time and becoming totally inactive,” she said. “I get it, because I lived it for so long. I was the biggest couch potato there ever was.”

Being cast for “Loser” changed everything for the wife and mother. When she and her daughter, Shanon, also cast for the Season 7, showed up, they were excited. That is until the two huffed and puffed their way up the stairs to the show’s gym in Southern California. Then it was on to punishing four-hour workouts and a drastic calorie slash: Phillips went from 5,000-6,000 calories a day to 1,300 on the show. “Sugar? Forget about it!”

“I grew stronger every day,” she said, getting past the painful shin splints and bleeding blisters to advance in the show to the final four. “At that point, I was a machine.”

Her final challenge was a first in “Loser” history. She and her competitors would have to run a marathon. “Scary” trainer Jillian Michaels met her at mile marker 25 and joined her in jogging the final mile plus. “She said, ‘I hate running,’” Phillips laughed.

A sliver of her former self, Phillips savors life and health in a new way now, continuing to eat wholesomely and workout at least every other day for an hour and a half at a time. The winner has gone from a size 24-26 to a size 6-8. She has appeared on shows such as “The View,” “Rachael Ray” and “Oprah,” and was the only “Loser” contestant to appear on the cover of “Good Housekeeping.” Phillips joined a group of about 25 audience members in a short Tai Chi workout after her talk.

Fighting childhood obesity has become a passion of hers as she travels the country speaking about her weight loss victory. “I say, ‘get up, dress up, and show up.’ Start today and move forward. If I can do it, anyone can.”